Good intentions strike again. Today’s New York Times op-ed page features a tragic account of how the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform act of 2010—no doubt conceived with good intentions by American politicians—is devastating mining towns in eastern Congo. In an effort to increase transparency in sourcing, the act “requires public companies to indicate what measures …
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“We know the price of an air-conditioned hotel and a plane. [Short-term overseas volunteer trips to the developing world are] an act of affluent tourism masquerading as community service.” -Senior executive, the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. Like this wary university administrator, I have harbored suspicions toward service-learning programs to the Global …
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AJWS commends President Obama’s announcement today that the administration will enact new steps to prevent genocide and mass atrocities and impose consequences on serious human rights violators. The measures are positive steps toward creating an environment of zero tolerance for human rights abuse.
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“We are born with only one obligation – to be completely who we are.” The wisdom behind these words by poet and teacher Mark Nepo in The Book of Awakening hit me as I reflect upon the one thing I learned from the death of my very dear colleague, Jeanne d’Arc Mihigo, AJWS’s country consultant …
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Originally posted on Pursue: Action for a Just World. As the Pursue Program Officer in San Francisco for the past two and a half years, one of the biggest lessons I learned was the importance of collaboration among Jewish communal organizations. Operating with limited resources, targeting similar demographics, and striving toward similar goals as many …
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On this International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, we have something to celebrate. Fifteen years after signing the UN convention, the DRC has taken a major step forward in advancing human rights. After months of delay, the DRC finally changed its penal code and adopted a law criminalizing torture on July 13th. Local …
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Originally posted on AlertNet. Headlines tell us that a severe drought in the Horn of Africa is responsible for creating “the most severe food security emergency in the world today.” But is it? Images of emaciated children and desperate parents have flooded the news. More than 10 million people in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia are …
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Desmond Tutu once said, “I have no idea what childbirth is like but I am told it is a painful yet rewarding experience.” For me, as a person who grew up in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, this quote is perfect to describe the situation in South Sudan. In many African …
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Great news in Peru! The Peruvian government just approved a new law against racist discourse in the media. The law was designed, promoted, and advocated for by AJWS’s grantee Peruvian partner LUNDU Centro de Estudios y Promoción Afroperuanos (LUNDU Center for Afro-Peruvian Studies and Empowerment). LUNDU was able to garner support from a significant number …
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Our relationship with people in the Global South is a complicated one. We (try to) move along a continuum from indifference to pity to sympathy to empathy to the vaunted level of “solidarity”—where, even though we live far from the sites of poverty and are largely insulated from the people who experience it, we see …
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